UC Letdown
by emjac
Summary: One shot of Kim coming to terms with things after an undercover operation.


**Author's Note: This little scene has been playing in my mind for a bit so I decided to write it down and post. It's my first post to this fandom. Let me know what you think.**

Kim's eyes struggled open and her head lifted off the back of the couch in time to reach for the service weapon laying next to her and point it towards the door. Before she could cock it, Adam's voice yelled, "Kim! It's me! Put the gun down!"

She lowered it back to its original spot and tilted her head back onto the couch, eyes once again closed. "What the hell!" he said, having locked the door and coming towards her. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry," she said, "I didn't know it was you."

"Yeah?" he said, a bit calmer. He set the take- out food on the coffee table and sat next to her. "How many people have a key to your apartment?"

"Just you. I don't know. I was just being cautious." She waved a hand at him, dismissing the conversation.

"What's going on with you? Why did you come home so early?" She looked like hell. She was still his beautiful girl, but she looked rough in her much too short uc outfit, and smudged makeup.

"He didn't tell you?" She was stalling, they both knew it, but he let her.

"No. He told me to keep my head in the game. We caught them, by the way. Case closed. Paperwork day tomorrow. Why did you want to miss that?"

She lifted her head and looked at him for the first time since he entered the room. "You think I wanted to miss that? After working for a week undercover with that scum, you think I wanted to miss the bust?"

"So what happened? Voight sent you home?'

"Yeah," she closed her eyes again wanting nothing more than to disengage from this conversation. Sleep and disengage.

"Kim!" he yelled. He was having none of this. "Open your eyes and talk to me."

She sighed deeply and acquiesced. Looking right at him, she said, "I took something, he figured it out, so he benched me."

"You took something?" He reached for her chin to look more closely into her eyes. "What did you take?"

"I don't know. A pill someone gave me." She staggered up from the couch, trying to distance herself from him. She hated the disappointment she saw in Voight's eyes and didn't want to see it in his as well. "What was I supposed to do? I couldn't break my cover."

"I don't know." Adam stood as well and stayed close to her, ready to catch her if she fell. "Puke it back up?"

"Yeah, well," was the only response Kim had as she tried to pick up her gun to lock away in the safe.

Adam reached it first. "I'll take care of that," he said. "Then we'll get you into the shower."

"I can do it myself," Kim said, knowing full well she was incapable of doing anything by herself at this time.

Adam managed to put the gun away and return to Kim's side before she face-planted. "I got ya, darlin'. Let's go." And he led her to the shower.

CPCPCPCPCP

Adam woke in the night to movement next to him. She was dreaming, and it wasn't a good one. Either the stress of the assignment or the effects of the pill were haunting her. Probably both. He reached a hand out and it landed on her side. He didn't want to startle and scare her so he rubbed his fingers across her skin. After a few moments, she settled, and he slept.

A bit later the stillness, as opposed to the movement of earlier, woke him. A sliver of brightening peaked under the window shade announcing dawn's arrival, but his body told him he should be sleeping. He reached a hand across the bed again and this time found it empty. It took a few moments to clear the fog from his mind before he managed to move himself into an upright position. He pulled a t-shirt over his head and ventured into the apartment in search of his girlfriend.

The vision of Kim curled up on the couch in the living room, knees pulled into her chest, staring into space quickened the pace of Adam's heart as he walked towards her. He pulled a blanket from a nearby chair, sat down beside her, and draped it over the two of them. She turned her body and slid into him like a puzzle piece.

"We should talk," he said.

After a moment, she responded. "What's the point?"

"The point? It might make you feel better, that's the point."

"No, I don't mean of talking. I mean of this. Any of this."

He had no clue what she meant. No point to what? Being up at the crack of dawn? Probably not that. The case? Most likely. Their relationship? That was his deepest fear. Always. Was she going to throw their relationship out the window again? He rubbed her leg and kissed the top of her head. Maybe he should not ask any more questions. That was the safest bet. But she was struggling and he needed to help. Against his better judgement he said, "Sweetheart, I need more words. What are you talking about?"

"This job that we insist on doing. That we keep telling ourselves is for the greater good."

Adam closed his eyes and worked hard at keeping his sigh of relief inaudible. This conversation he could have. "We just put away a major gunrunner who was responsible for so many deaths. How is that not helping the greater good?"

Kim straightened her body up and turned to face him. His hand slid around and fell into place on her shoulder where he kept it. "But look at the things we do to get these guys. Look at all the deception and the lies we tell."

"To put away criminals? Yeah, we lie to them and deceive them. They're criminals. I'm ok with that. You're not ok with that?"

She shook her head. "It's not just the criminals we lie to. It's spills over to other people, too."

He tried to understand what she was talking about, but couldn't. Maybe the drug she took still had hold of her. "What are you talking about? You lie to other people? You lie to me?"

"No!" She reached a hand up to his face. She knew she was rambling. "No, Adam, I never lie to you. But the bad guys, they're always surrounded by really good people. Like Hanley, the gunrunner. I got so close to his sister this past week. She is such a good person. It's not her fault that her brother's a low life. She got caught in the middle of this and I pretended the whole time that I was someone I wasn't. She loved me and I just told lie after lie so we could get her brother."

"Sounds like you loved her, too, but it's not your fault her brother is a criminal." He leaned in closer. "This is not on you."

"It is. I'm the one that was lying and pretending and using her."

"You could try reaching out to her. Ya know, offer her some options."

Kim nestled back into him. "That never works. They always feel so betrayed that they want nothing more to do with me. You can't blame them." She closed her eyes and took comfort from Adam's closeness. "I can't do it anymore. It's not worth it to me."

"Maybe we shouldn't make any life decisions today."

"No," she said, "seriously, I'm done." She stood and walked to the kitchen to start coffee.

"Kim," he rose against his body's wishes and followed her. "Look, you've been through a lot. You're tired. You're on . . . something. You're really in no position to figure this out today. We'll make our way through the day and figure everything out . . . later."

Kim moved around the kitchen at a quick, almost frantic, pace. "Do I look tired to you? The drug worked its way through my system, and everything I went through just proved to me that that I'm done."

"So that's it? You're leaving Intelligence."

Kim poured them each a cup of coffee, added cream to hers, sugar to his, and took a sip. "No," she said. "I don't want to leave Intelligence."

Not yet touching his beverage, Adam rounded the peninsula counter to sidle up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist. He buried his mouth into her neck as she took another sip. "Do you hear the craziness that you're talking?"

She heard it. He heard it. She didn't need to say it. "MIght be easier to quit than face Voight."

"You'll have to face him anyway." He moved his mouth to the nape of her neck. "Besides, he'll bitch you out and then things will be fine."

She turned in his arms to face him, "Are we a family or are we not a family?"

He knew she was talking about Intelligence. They had this conversation before. "We're a family."

"'Because if we screw up we're out. That doesn't sound much like a family. That's not how my family worked."

"Lots of families work like that. And has he ever really kicked one of us out? He's all talk."

"Oooh!" A smile played on her lips. "I'd love to hear you say that to his face. Actually, I'd pay a lot of money to hear you'd say that to his face."

He pressed his lips hard on her mouth. "Take it back," he said and kissed her hard again.

"Hmmm . . ." she said when he let her up for breath again, "I take it back."

He released her, gave a playful slap to her ass, and reached for his coffee, "You're so easy, Burgess." She picked up a dish towel, the closest thing she could find, and tossed it at him.

"I'll make you breakfast and we'll go to work. You can talk to Voight and take it from there. How does that sound?"

"Like my only real option," she said.

He dropped one more kiss on the top of her head before moving to start cooking. "Don't worry, darlin'. We'll figure it all out."


End file.
